


Tomorrow May Be Brighter Than We'd Hoped

by caladria



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s07e20 Institutional Memory, F/M, Missing Scene, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-13
Updated: 2008-02-13
Packaged: 2019-05-15 10:44:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14789031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caladria/pseuds/caladria
Summary: Episode tag: Institutional Memory.  Shameless CJ/Danny fluff





	Tomorrow May Be Brighter Than We'd Hoped

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

She’s lying awake, worrying. It’s new – not the worrying, but the fact that she’s worrying about something so close to home, so… connected to her, and her happiness. It’s been a long time since she had a life that wasn’t inseparable from the White House.  
She turns on her side and digs a finger into a set of ribs.

“Ow,” Danny complains, still half asleep, and curls up protectively to prevent further attack.

“Danny.”

He mumbles incoherently.

“ _Danny_ ,” she repeats, more insistently.

His eyes open, and he seeks out the clock rather than her face.

“C.J., it’s three am.”

He’s trying to be reasonable and not mention the fact that he’s only had a few hours’ sleep, and it’s kind of endearing, really – the swell of affection isn’t doing much to help her here, though.

“It’s important.”

His eyes catch hers’, and there’s a careful neutrality in his voice when he says, “White House want you?”

Saying no to Santos is something that he wants her to do just as much as she wants to actually do. She might be useless at this, but she’s figured that one out at least.

She shakes her head, trying to find the words. It’s important, she knows that – it’s something that she’s seen others deal with, whether win or fail, and she doesn’t want it hanging over her for the next ten, twenty years, or however long this thing they have is going to last. God, he really isn’t some guy in a bar and suddenly she hopes that twenty years is an underestimate.

That’s… terrifying, but having Danny slowly wake up next to her is a comforting presence that she doesn’t want to go away, and that kind of steadies her. Sort of.

He flashes her that grin, then, the one that she always got the urge to kiss off his face.

“You just woke me up because you want me. Don’t worry – I know I’m irresistible.”

Well, considering what they’d been up to a few hours ago… “What are you, twenty five?” she asked dryly.

“Only for you, baby,” he responds, raising an eyebrow suggestively.

She just looks at him.

“Seriously, what were you gonna ask?”

“Are you sure you can do –“

“I can do serious!” 

“Sure?”

“I’m… c’mon, C.J., just spit it out.”

She props herself up on one elbow, to see his face better. She’s not sure if she can read his face that well – yet – but it has to be worth a try.

“You do realise you’re naked, right?” he asks into the silence that’s developing.

“Don’t interrupt,” she says.

“Okay,” he says mildly.

“I’m not fooling around, just… let me get this out.” She’s trying to make it a warning, she just hopes it doesn’t sound as pleading as she thinks it does.

She sucks at this, but Danny’s waiting patiently now, and she’s got to wonder if this is part of his training or whatever-the-hell he’s going to call whatever-the-hell he’s planning on doing to her.

“What you said earlier… are you really fine with it?” she nearly blurts out.

“I said a lot of things earlier.”

“Lunch.”

“I said a lot of things at lunch,” Danny reiterates. He’s back to being carefully neutral now.

She wants to ask him, _really_ wants to ask him how much of what he said at lunch he meant, but she doesn’t quite dare. She’s scared the answer’s ‘all of it’ and she’s scared the answer isn’t.

“The being Mrs C.J. Cregg bit.”

He looks at her for a second, trying to figure out something that C.J. can’t even guess at, then speaks. “Yeah,” he reiterates. “I meant it.”

“Are you sure?” she presses. “Because…“ She raises her free arm, as if she can pluck a good reason from the air. “You have a Pulitzer prize, Danny. I don’t want you to wake up in five years time and blame me for holding you back.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t. But… I won’t.”

“But you don’t know that.”

He opens his mouth again – probably to repeat himself – and closes it again. “I’m not Abigail Bartlet,” he tells her.

There’s a silence.

“I still don’t know what I want to do,” he continues. “When I do, we’ll figure it out.”

“Just like that? What if what you want to and what I want to do are completely incompatible?!”

He looks at her with pure affection, then. And it’s not that she’s never been looked at like that before – she’s not seventeen, she’s been around a time or five – it’s just that her crazy-woman routine isn’t normally on the list of things that provoke it.

“We’ll figure it out,” he repeats. 

“Just like that?” The scepticism is strong in her voice this time – she’s been there before, too; it starts off with promise that everything’s going to be fine and ends up with the gentle disintegration of a long distance relationship that neither party really cares about.

“I swear, you can’t really be this bad. There has to be hope somewhere.”

He’s trying not to laugh at her.

“I really can, and you have to know this,” she insists. It’s important he knows.

“Okay then. You’re a lunatic.”

“Danny!”

“You wrote a list of reasons why you couldn’t date me. I’ve known about this for a while now.”

“I opened myself up to you, and you mocked me.”

“You work with Josh Lyman. I figured you could hack it.”

“You’ll pay.”

The tone of this is making her feel better, but then Danny drags her down to his level with a murmured, “Over and over, but in the morning, ‘kay?” before making her forget about everything for a while.


End file.
